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Summer Visit - 2013 - SHIPs

The summer visit to Caltech is 3-4 days long and is the only time during the year of work when all the participants on the team come together in person to work intensively on the data. Generally, each educator may bring up to two students to the summer visit that are paid for by NITARP, and they may raise funds to bring two more. The teams work at Caltech; the summer visit typically includes a half-day tour of JPL, which is a favorite site for group photos. Reload to see a different set of quotes.

The SHIPs team came to visit in June 2013. The core team educators attended, plus 9 students.

Quotes

  • [student:] It wasn't necessarily as surprising as it was relieving to find out that everyone was generally in the same boat as far as knowledge went. I was a bit nervous to go on the trip because Python and photometry were very new to me. But after discovering that it was new to everyone, it became a collaborative effort that I really enjoyed, and it never seemed like a competition.
  • [student:] The best thing about the trip was meeting all of the other students and teachers who were working on the same research as us. It was nice to be able to come together and compare our research and learn together as a group.
  • [student:] I always thought that astronomers just look into the sky with microscopes and make observations, but they do so much more than that. They are able to use tools to make further observations and do research. It's not easy being an astronomer and I have so much respect for what they do.
  • [student:] it .. is such an incredible feeling to be doing real research that matters and to solve an unanswered question. All my life, in every science class I’ve been in, the result of an experiment or project has always been known. I know that if I ask my teacher a question, he or she will know the answer. For the first time in my life, the answer is unknown and I am helping to solve it.
  • [student:] It is an incredible feeling to be performing revolutionary science and developing new found conclusions, over the traditional student experience of replicating experiments performed by Galileo or Newton. This experience will continue to benefit not only my vocational aspirations, but scientists to come.

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Summer Visit - 2013 - SHIPs